6/10/2010 @ 3:00PM

From The Kremlin On Down

What do you call someone who steals a credit card and uses it with no heed for the consequences? A thief and a fool. And what if they’re stealing from the dead? I’m not sure there’s a word for such a total absence of all moral principles, from respect of private property to respect for the dead.

This is the crime committed by four Russian soldiers who were guarding the site of the plane crash in Russia in April that killed a good half of the Polish government leadership. The officials were on their way to visit the grim forest in Russia where thousands of Polish officers were massacred by the Soviets on Stalin’s orders.

The four soldiers stole a credit card from one of the dead Polish officials and put it to work for four days. If these conscripts–hungry, sleep-deprived, beaten by officers and their comrades-in-arms, perhaps even prostituting themselves in order to make enough money to eat–get their day in court, the question of human dignity and rights will emerge once again, sending us back to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the pigs set the rules.

This is not a discussion the Kremlin wants to have. Since Putin became Russia’s undisputed leader, he has rapidly eliminated critique and dissent. On the propaganda front the Kremlin has tens, or hundreds, of thousands of sheep capable of endlessly bleating “Putin and Medvedev are good, the opposition is bad.”

In most cases the Kremlin goes for the hard line first, bringing in its well-maintained and trained crowds of supporters afterward. Examples abound in business and politics, from the arrest and imprisonment of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the fates of many other businessmen who fell victim to elite fights for power and assets.

For hundreds of years Russia has known no other rules, making every resident mimic the pattern of elite behavior no matter how much money he had or didn’t have. Together they stole, and stole big, throughout the history of the country.

If the Kremlin, for example, is willing to “nationalize” the oil company Yukos or pass a
BP
-licensed gas field to Gazprom, provincial governors have the right to hit up the owner of a mid-size firm working on their territory and threaten immediate consequences if their personal conditions are not met. Down the chain, the mayor of a small town can attempt to extort a few kopecks from the owner of a local ice cream parlor or car mechanic if the latter is not already under criminal or police protection.

For that matter, the police are so corrupt and brutal that they are barely distinguishable from criminals. The cops use the same methods as crooks and in many cases work with them hand in hand to squeeze as much as they can from the very victims who turn to them for protection.

Cases of torture and death in police precincts are so common that hardly anyone except human rights activists pays any attention. The police have to do something really outrageous for society to make its displeasure known. Just such an incident took place last year in a Moscow supermarket, when a cop opened fire, killing and wounding seven people.

The cops and the criminals work the streets, while their comrades from the FSB ( the former KGB) stalk the corridors of power. Their occupation is a wonderful combination of the Animal Farm dogs who protect the leader, and the 1984 thought police, while at the same time they run protection rackets for big businesses with a silent nod from the top.

Modern Russia is not a free country. Freedom came only once in Russia’s entire history–for nine years, from 1991 to 2000. The West may choose to ignore the obvious, hiding behind phrases like “emerging democracy” or a “country in transition,” but the cruel features of dictatorship are there whether we choose to acknowledge them or not.

Some in the West issue absurd calls to avoid interfering in Russia’s internal affairs, lacking the basic understanding that the very absence of action makes the leadership in the Kremlin even more aggressive on external affairs. Some are eager to reintroduce the “strategic patience” doctrine pursued during the Soviet period. But what the West, or the U.S. alone, needs is a clear policy toward Russia, where the Kremlin’s actions entail consequences. Otherwise, the West will be complicit in the creation of another Animal Farm that will not fade into history in the near future.

You lost to an FSB colonel, some White House guests told President Bush, according to my sources several years ago. You are losing to the same guy, President Obama’s honorable guests should inform him.

Dmitry Sidorov is an independent journalist. He was formerly the bureau chief for Kommersant Publishing in Washington, D.C.